Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Time Traveling

Time travel is
such an interesting topic: all sorts of crazy ideas have been passed around all
trying to give a definitive answer as to what the consequences of it might be,
how it works or if it is even possible. Today I will give you my version of
time travel with the help of Back to the
Future’s version since it is a movie I highly prefer and slightly agree
with in terms of time travel schematics.

The diagram
provided has a description below basically explaining how each timeline is
created in Back to the Future.
According to the diagram, as some of you may notice, jumping “into” the future
will not alter the current timeline at all. This is where my own disagreement
comes in. Any sort of prolonged
absence between the present and the future (by which we are traveling to) would
result in change of the current timeline. Let us say that I take a trip “into”the future twenty years from now.
Though the trip was instantaneous for me the people who saw me most, assuming
that would be several times a week, would think that I had disappeared;
moreover, I pass up a myriad of opportunities to “leave my mark” upon the world
due to this absence. In short, I did not
exist for twenty years.

The diagram also
suggests that traveling back in time is quite different from traveling forward in
time. Any sort of time travel to the past that interacts or interferes with
something that “inspires” the future will result in an alteration of that
timeline and create another, different timeline (as Doc says, “erased from
existence”); it really means that any
time travel to the past will distort and create an alternate future – in the
eyes of the time traveler only because for everyone else the change would be
unknown. I agree, and yet again disagree. I agree that time travel to the past
will create an alternate future that is unknown to me (if I am the time
traveler), but I disagree on another level which I will discuss next.

The way I see time travel is somewhat like a
description I’ve heard of other dimensions – dimensions in the sense of dots,
lines, depth, and time. The first dimension is a dot, the
second dimension is a line or plane of which we can only see one side (i.e.
cartoons on a sheet of paper), the third dimension incorporates depth to shapes
and multiple sides, and then the fourth dimension brings time into the formula (i.e. how much time it takes for the image of an actual object to
reach our eyes). The further one delves into dimensions the more complicated it
gets. Eventually one ends up looking at dimensions that deal with the infinite
possibilities of a single universe, then infinite universes, and finally the
infinite possibilities within an infinite number of universes. Anyways, I see
my life full of infinite possibilities that may turn into outcomes, and other
people’s lives are the same; moreover, while there is an infinite number of
possibilities for every second of my life and every other life or inanimate
object there is also an infinite number of other universes in which the
infinite number of possibilities are each tried out for my life alone which is
then compounded by the infiniteness of all “other’s” as well.

I see time
travel as a type of traveling from my universe to another universe. This means
that if I time travel I may arrive in a universe in which another “me” exists
and is living out one or more of the infinite possibilities that did not occur in my universe or I
arrive in a universe that I never existed in or I arrive in a universe that
precedes my existence and any interaction I have in that universe will ultimately change that universe before the other “me” is even born or I travel to a
universe in which the other “me” is long gone though my presence in that universe at that time still has some quite profound effects on the future of that universe. Unfortunately, my view of
time travel means that the probability of the time traveler going back to their universe is one to the infinite
number of possibilities of one universe to the infinite number of universes to
the infinite possibilities within an infinite number of universes.

But since the
unknown cannot be spoken of as fact I must say this was merely a play for the mind.

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About Me

"My revolt, my freedom, my passion." ~Albert Camus...
Always thinking and searching for unity and order, though knowing
neither is possible. Life with no social constraints. No concern for the
future or the past; rather, living fully in the present.